Community is secondary without development foresight
The hasty and little-supported rezoning of the Ettalong waterfront is just one more example of the inadequacy of the newly-minted Development Control Plan to instil any confidence in the community about the council's management capabilities or to give any indication of a stable framework for the future shape of the Peninsula.
If there is any justification of the change, beyond its providing an opportunity to increase developers' profits, I haven't heard it, and the only supporter of the move that I know of is the Chamber of Commerce.
We could compare this situation with the Chamber's unfortunate promotion of the nondescript West St building in Umina that also breached the regulations, on the grounds that it would provide a landmark entrance to the shopping area.
We can now see the result and can transpose this outcome to Ettalong which is already disfigured by the Mantra and Atlantis buildings.
Of course, what this schemozzle emphasizes once again is that the Council has no forward-looking development concept for the Peninsula and is only capable of piecemeal reactions to developer initiatives, with the community interest far in the background as a secondary factor.
I pointed out years ago, when it was still in embryo form, that the so-called Regional Plan would give no worthwhile guidance for decision-making on development questions and that any properly organized council would already be preparing real plans and exposing them to the public for genuine consultation.
I recall our previous mayor of fond memory once musing that the future of the Peninsula was something to think about, and I commented at the time that thinking about it was fine, but practical realities required more than just thinking.
At the moment, it seems as though we haven't even got to the thinking stage, so Peninsula residents need to be alert to the stealthy changes being introduced as isolated actions.
We cannot avoid the fact that the Peninsula will be changed by a number of factors outside our control.
Pretending that this will not happen and that we can preserve some Arcadian enclave in Central Coast is absurd.
However, we should all be alarmed by the prospect that the future of the Peninsula is in the hands of unimaginative bureaucrats going through the motions of development management, without any vision, policy, plan, program or procedure that is acceptable to the ones who will eventually be the, dare I say it, victims of this process.
I have no long-term personal interest in this matter, but it pains me professionally to see such incompetent practice being exercised on the Peninsula.
Heaven help us when the new Developers' Committee takes over responsibility for decision-making.
SOURCE:
Email, 16 Jan 2023
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy